A list of the Austin locations in Reverend Jacob Fontaine's life reads like a tourist guidebook. He lived on the Woodlawn plantation of Governor Elisha M. Pease, while his wife Viney cooked meals for the Governor at the chief executive's mansion. As church sexton, he rang the bells in the tower of St. David’s Episcopal Church. He swept floors and emptied trash cans in the historic General Land Office Building. He organized the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association while standing in the shade of Treaty Oak. He founded Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, the iconic house of worship in the historically black neighborhood of Clarksville.
And in 1876, in a somewhat shabby two-story building that still stands at 24th and San Gabriel, Fontaine became the first black newspaper owner and editor in Austin.
Jacob Fontaine might even have been present on that fateful October day in 1838 when Texas President Mirabeau Lamar supposedly decided to locate the Texas capital at the Colorado River hamlet of Waterloo. Jacob took his surname from Edward Fontaine, the white Episcopalian minister and Lamar presidential secretary who owned Jacob prior to Emancipation. Edward Fontaine had accompanied Lamar on a western campaign swing that brought the party to Waterloo. The two Fontaines maintained a close relationship both before and after the Civil War, and there is every chance that Jacob was present at Mirabeau Lamar’s shooting of an enormous buffalo at the future intersection of 8th and Congress, as well as his later pronouncement from atop the hill where the Capitol now sits that “this should be the seat of future empire.”
Despite having a decades-long relationship with Jacob Fontaine, Episcopalian minister Edward Fontaine left no written record of his one-time slave. (Photo courtesy of University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, crediting St. David's Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas.)
“The gold dollar is the name of this little Paper,” wrote Jacob Fontaine in the inaugural August 1876 edition. His wasn’t the first newspaper aimed at blacks in Texas, or even in Austin, that distinction belonging to the short-lived Freeman’s Press of 1868. It had more staying power than its predecessor, though, lasting at least until 1878 and perhaps until 1880.
A rare copy of the inaugural August 1876 edition of Jacob Fontaine's newspaper, The Gold Dollar. (Courtesy of the Austin History Center)
Born into slavery in Arkansas in 1808, Jacob later was taken to Mississippi where he was bought by Edward Fontaine. When Edward subsequently brought his slave to Texas, Jacob left behind a sister named Nelly. The siblings hadn’t seen each other for twenty years when in 1872 Jacob went back to Mississippi for a visit. There Nelly gave Jacob a gold dollar. Over the next six years Jacob parlayed that coin into a savings of $60, which he used to start his newspaper. He aimed his paper squarely at the concerns of Austin’s African-American community, as evidenced by this notice in that first edition: “A letter of inquiry from Mr. Elmira Jones for his Sister Judith Jones who came to Austin from Sanaugustine with Dr. Ford. If found tel Rev Jacob Fontaine.” Proving that Mr. Jones’ predicament was by no means unique among his contemporaries is the addendum, “Aney one wishing to inquire for thir kinn send ten cents to the gold dollar.”
How Jacob spent his earliest years in Austin is unknown but by the early 1860s he was preaching to fellow slaves in the basement of the Methodist church at Brazos and East 10th. White observers monitored his sermons; in fact, it was illegal for Jacob to conduct services without such an observer present. Chafing at such restraint, Jacob and other members of the congregation began meeting secretly in 1864 to plan a split from the white church. Over the next twenty years Jacob participated in the founding of five African-American churches as well as the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association. Thus, by the time he founded The Gold Dollar, Jacob Fontaine had established himself as a leader in Austin’s black community.
Among Jacob Fontaine's accomplishments is his 1871 founding of Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, still an integral part of the Clarksville community. (From the book "Austin, Texas-Then and Now" by Jeffrey Kerr.)
The Gold Dollar did not ignore its readers’ religious needs. “To the Sabbath Schools,” the paper’s editor wrote, “Remember thy creator in the days of thy youth.” “Children,” he cautioned, “you must attend your Sabbath schools regular and Soon for it is hoped that our race will be more fully Christianized . . . .” And to the children’s parents he wrote, “Every Man and Woman of GOD should set their selves against church humbug.”
There is no way to know how many Austin residents regularly read The Gold Dollar. The newspaper did attract attention from its white-owned counterpart, the Daily Democratic Statesman. “It is a neat little paper,” wrote Statesman editor L. J. DuPre , “and does credit to the colored man who conducts it.” The Statesman also reported that “The [Texas Land] Register extends its paw to Rev. Fontaine, the editor and says: ‘Go in, you old Etheopian inkslinger.’”
Jacob Fontaine’s home and newspaper office building at 24th and San Gabriel sits in what was once the African-American community of Wheatville. The Gold Dollar ceased publication around 1880. Precisely when Jacob moved away from Wheatville is unknown, but his death came in 1898 at a house on East 16th Street long ago obliterated by expansion of the University of Texas. As Wheatville was surrounded and absorbed by Austin, Italian immigrants gradually replaced its black residents. In 1919 one such immigrant, a man named Joe Franzetti, bought Jacob Fontaine’s former Wheatville home and opened a grocery that he operated for the next 50 years. The building survived a 1977 fire and still looks very much like it did in Jacob Fontaine’s day. (The building will soon be the new home of a bar called Freedmen's run by the former owners of the Scoot Inn.)
Shown here in a 2004 photograph, this building at 2402 San Gabriel Street in the Wheatville neighborhood served as Jacob Fontaine's home and newspaper office. (From the book "Austin, Texas-Then and Now" by Jeffrey Kerr.)
In addition to his religious and publishing work, Jacob took an active role in politics. When Austin supporters sought to persuade Texas voters to locate the state university in their city they enlisted Jacob’s help in recruiting black voters to the cause. Jacob focused his efforts on the state’s black ministers, who in turn strove to convince members of their congregations to vote for Austin. Reverend Fontaine’s support for Austin rested in part on the state constitution’s promise to establish a black branch of the state university, which voters also elected to locate in Austin. That promise went unfulfilled. As the Reverend had written in The Gold Dollar, “O Lord, God of our Fathers, when will such Evels be put down?”
Fontaine's remains lie in Oakwood Cemetery, the city’s first burial ground. His wife Viney, who preceded him in death by three years, lies beside him. There are no gravestones but a historical marker stands at the approximate location of the graves. Slave, preacher, church leader, political activist and newspaper publisher, Jacob Fontaine deserves our attention and respect for his role in Austin history. And the next time you hold a dollar in your hands, think of what Jacob Fontaine did with the one he held in his.
Jacob Fontaine is buried in the vicinity of his historical marker near the entrance to Oakwood Cemetery at East 16th and Navasota streets. (Photo by Jeffrey Kerr.)